Triple checking the final product and getting keen for the PoL
In my previous post, I outlined the amendments I made to the bass drum design, which significantly improved the output of the sound quality. In inspecting the final product in preparation for the PoL (which will be a great night of sharing wonderful projects for music education!) I pulled out the jumper wire of the bass drum (in kit #2) from the Arduino wihiteboard to see that the dupont connector had come off the rainbow wire...
This explains why the bass drum had a poorer sound quality compared to the hi-hat, snare, tom 1 and tom 2 even after I improved the placement of the piezo element!
As I'm now using smaller AIFF files, I've also realised that the bass drum AIFF file is the largest of the 5 drums, which after some troubleshooting, I've confirmed is the reason why the sound is still not the clearest. James has a program which reduces the file size so tomorrow morning before the PoL I'll check to see if this bass drum file can be further reduced! Otherwise, I'm very happy with the recent improvements made to the midi drum kits and I'm so looking forward to an opportunity to use them in the music classroom and put them through the real test!
Here's a video of the final product; a DIY midi drum kit that can be reproduced by anyone from music teachers for classroom use to high school students who wish to play the drums but can't afford a commercial electric or acoustic drum kit.
So there we have it, a silent (or loud) drum kit, (depending on what you'd like it to be)* with a total cost of less than $70 making it an affordable and achievable project with many opportunity for cross-curricular learning.
*I plan to borrow two external speakers for each MacBook tomorrow for a clearer sound quality than the standard Mac speakers and for more volume!
Don't forget to check out my blog post "Miss Szanto's DIY midi drum set" for instructions and resources to build your very own drum kit!
Over and out,
Isabel